The Camp Fire Girls at Long Lake Bessie King in Summer Camp

Excerpt

CHAPTER I

A GROUNDLESS JEALOUSY

"I told you we were going to be happy here, didn't I, Zara?"

The speaker was Dolly Ransom, a black-haired, mischievous Wood Gatherer of the Camp Fire Girls, a member of the Manasquan Camp Fire, the Guardian of which was Miss Eleanor Mercer, or Wanaka, as she was known in the ceremonial camp fires that were held each month. The girls were staying with her at her father's farm, and only a few days before Zara, who had enemies determined to keep her from her friends of the Camp Fire, had been restored to them, through the shrewd suspicions that a faithless friend had aroused in Bessie King, Zara's best chum.

Zara and Dolly were on top of a big wagon, half filled with new-mown hay, the sweet smell of which delighted Dolly, although Zara, who had lived in the country, knew it too well to become wildly enthusiastic over anything that was so commonplace to her. Below them, on the ground, two other Camp Fire Girls in the regular working costume of the Camp Fire—middy blouses and wide blue bloomers—were tossing up the hay, under the amused direction of Walter Stubbs, one of the boys who worked on the farm.

"I'm awfully glad to be here with the girls again, Dolly," said Zara. "No, that's not the way! Here, use your rake like this. The way you're doing it the wagon won't hold half as much hay as it should."

"Is Bessie acting as if she was your teacher, Margery?" Dolly called down laughingly to Margery Burton, who, because she was always laughing, was called Minnehaha by the Camp Fire Girls. "Zara acts just as if we were in school, and she's as superior and tiresome as she can be."

"She's a regular farm girl, that Zara," said Walt, with a grin. "Knows as much about packin' hay as I do—'most. Bessie, thought you'd lived on a farm all yer life. Zara there can beat yer all hollow at this. You're only gettin' half a pickful every time you toss the hay up. Here—let me show you!"

"I'd be a pretty good teacher if I tried to show Margery, Dolly," laughed Bessie King. "You hear how Walter is scolding me!"

"He's quite right, too," said Dolly, with a little pout. "You know too much, Bessie—I'm glad to find there's something you don't do right. You must she stupid about some things, just like the rest of us, if you lived on a farm and don't know how to pitch hay properly after all these years!"

Bessie laughed. Dolly's smile was ample proof that there was nothing ill-natured about her little gibe.

"Girls on farms in this country don't work in the fields—the men wouldn't let them," said Bessie. "They'd rather have them stay in a hot kitchen all day, cooking and washing dishes. And when they want a change, the men let them chop wood, and fetch water, and run around to collect the eggs, and milk the cows, and churn butter and fix the garden truck! Oh, it's easy for girls and women on a farm—all they have to do is a few little things like that. The men do all the hard work. You wouldn't let your wife do more than that, would you, Walter?"

The boy flushed....